The next version of the Lumina desktop environment has just been released! Version 0.8.2 is mainly a “spit-and-polish” release: focusing on bugfixes, overall appearances, and interface layout/design. The FreeBSD port has already been updated to the new version, and the PC-BSD “Edge” repository will be making the new version available within the next day or two (packages building now). If you are creating/distributing your own packages, you can find the source code for this release in the “qt5/0.8.2″ branch in the Lumina repository on GitHub.

The major difference that people will notice is that the themes/colors distributed with the desktop have been greatly improved, and I have included a few examples below. The full details about the changes in this release are listed at the bottom of the announcement.

Reminder: The Lumina desktop environment is still considered to be “beta-quality”, so if you find things that either don’t work or don’t work well, please report them on the PC-BSD bug tracker so that they can get fixed as soon as possible.

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Changes from 0.8.1 -> 0.8.2:

New Utility: “lumina-info”

This utility provides basic information about the current version of the Lumina desktop as well as link to various information online (source repository, list of contributors, bug tracker, etc…).

Theming:

New Color Scheme: PCBSD10-Default (the default for new PC-BSD users)

Lumina-[Red/Green/Gold/Purple] color schemes updated.

“Lumina-Default” and “None” theme templates updated significantly.

Make it easier for a distributor to set a default theme/color by just supplying the name instead of the full path (since paths can be different on different OS’s)

Fix issue with some fonts not loading properly.

Distinguish between “Save” and “Apply” in the theme template editor (“Save” to update the file but keep the editor open, “Apply” to update the file and close the editor). This makes it much easier to test changes to the current theme template as you don’t need to close/re-open the editor to try it out.

Add the ability to distinguish between transparent/opaque desktop plugins in the theme template.

Configuration Utility Changes:

Add a new dialog for selecting plugins of all kinds. This makes it easier to browse through and read the descriptions of the plugins before actually selecting one.

There will be a FreeBSD booth during SCALE, to be held at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles from Friday, February 19 to Sunday, February 22. This event has a small entrance fee and registration is required. The FreeBSD booth will be next to the OpenBSD booth. As usual, we’ll be giving away cool swag, PC-BSD DVDs, FreeNAS CDs, and brochures and accepting donations for the FreeBSD Foundation.

There will be several BSD-related talks at this event. Dru Lavigne will present “What’s New in FreeNAS 9.3″ at 13:30 on Saturday, Brooks Davis will present “Booting FreeBSD on BERI” at 14:30 on Saturday, and Michael Dexter will present “FreeBSD Virtualization Options” at 16:30 on Saturday.

The BSDA certification exam will be available at noon on Sunday. You can register and pay for the exam here.

We hope to continue rolling these –CURRENT images as a way for testers
and developers to tryout both FreeBSD and PC-BSD bleeding edge features,
often months before a planned release. These images include a full PKG
repository compiled for that months image. Users of this system will
also be able to “upgrade” when the next monthly image is published.

– Reporting Bugs –

This is a great way to test features and report bugs well before the
release cycle begins for the next major .0 release.

Hey Everyone! The new version of PC-BSD is out. There are lots of improved features so check out the release notes below!

The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the availability of 10.1.1-RELEASE!

Changes since RC2
———————————————

* Fixed an issue using auto-login in PCDM and setting incorrect locale
* Fixed a bug in user-manager allowing the deletion of the current user
* Updated GRUB to include i18n files
* Fixed an issue with invalid GPT options being displayed when
installing to a specific partition
* Updated GRUB to better auto-detect other disk-drives to chainload via
the boot menu
* Fixed various bugs in external media mounting